All of this reveals a great shift in American politics. By electing Trump and tolerating Bolton, we have shown that we are not a nation that can be consistently trusted with the stewardship of the free world. It’s not that Trump, in the end, will collapse NATO, plunge us into a great depression, or start World War III — although with Bolton by his side he is capable of doing all of those things — but rather that the American voters have shown the world that we are capable of astonishing selfishness and petulance. We have abandoned our civic virtue not just at home, but overseas, and once lost, that position cannot be recovered.

Perhaps this is all too pessimistic. Americans have elected men of weak moral character and shallow political commitment to office before. But not when it mattered so much, and certainly not since the advent of the era in which the President of United States —the sole steward of an arsenal of weapons that can extinguish civilization itself — became the leader and protector not only of millions of his own citizens, but of the billions of others who rely on America as a friend and ally.

The most optimistic outcome is that decades from now the memory of the Trump years fades away, and both we and the world look upon this period as an aberration, a kind of fever or temporary insanity from which we awoke just before we lost any possibility of an American restoration. But the damage is getting deeper by the day. Healing it will take more than just electing a new president: it will require years of painful self-examination, and calling ourselves to account honestly and transparently. Only then will we begin to earn back the presumption of trust and leadership that was once one of our proudest achievements as a free nation.